


Problems with Parakeets

by orphan_account



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Good Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright - Freeform, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Mental Health Issues, Teenager Malcolm Bright, Young Malcolm Bright, parakeets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23877736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Malcolm Whitly doesn't know how to control himself. He doesn't ever mean to be malicious, and he just wants to fix things. His father was a serial killer and he was bad and he enjoyed killing people and he's just not what Malcolm is. Malcolm doesn't ever want to be like Martin and Malcolm knows he isn't Martin. But Malcolm keeps doing things that say otherwise. Malcolm needed to kill the first parakeet, it was in pain. Malcolm needed to help the other birds too.Or, the one where Malcolm ticks off one of the requirements of the sociopathic triad
Comments: 1
Kudos: 43





	Problems with Parakeets

**Author's Note:**

> YEah so I just finished watching Prodigal Son and I'm in love with it. I wanted some more young Malcolm content, so I made some. It's real short but I just wanted to add something to the fandom :)

Malcolm Whitly had a budgie parakeet as a kid and throughout his teens. Well, not _a_ parakeet. He had multiple. Exactly seven parakeets. Not all of them at one time, mind you, he had them one after another. Seven is a lot, especially when the lifespan of one of the budgies is around ten years.

Malcolm was gifted the first bird a month after his dad was officially put in prison for killing so many people. The bird arrived with a ribbon and with expensively done nails and beak. Malcolm wasn’t particularly excited about it, but his mother’s friends insisted that taking care of an animal would be good for him. Jessica didn't want a dog or cat pissing about the house, so naturally, she bought him a bird. When she introduces the bird to him, she lightly names all the things he'd have to do to take care of it. Malcolm nods along to the instructions, but he is too busy rewinding the words his father told him during the arrest. He doesn't like the idea of being like his dad.

It was a nice, plain parakeet. Light blue with delicate wings and dark stripes across its head. Malcolm didn’t name the bird, his younger sister Ainsley did. His first Parakeet was named “Dawn.” Ainsley named the bird after dish soap, not the first glimpse of light before the actual sun. She was very clever, even as a kid.

At first, Malcolm had enjoyed watching the bird hop around in its round cage. That was before he foolishly dove into books about animal psychology and rights. A kid shouldn't have to see pictures of bloody declawing and a kid shouldn't have to see a girl boxed up in the basement.

He ended up doing lots of research on how to take care of birds. He learned that round cages were terrible for birds. There were no reference points in a round cage and, despite what many people think, birds had enough cognitive ability to memorize things. Though, the birds did not have enough cognitive ability to understand that their cage was round and not infinite. So they would hop around and around and around. The birds would drive themselves insane over trying to get somewhere that doesn’t exist. They didn’t understand why everywhere they looked was the same.

Malcolm had tried to get his mother to buy a different cage, but she didn’t have any real care for the pet, so she just got an even bigger rounder cage. Malcolm gave up on getting Dawn an angular cage.

One afternoon Malcolm notices that Dawn hadn’t eaten anything yet. He notices that Dawn keeps picking at its own skin and refrains from chirping at all. Then, the bird tries to fly and Malcolm sees that it had a terribly broken, bent leg. It must’ve gotten caught in the metal knots of the cage junctions.

Silently, Malcolm opens the cage, reaches in, and grabs the bird. He holds its head between his left hand’s thumb and pointer finger. Standing statue-still, he looks closely at the bird. He studies its little feathers and feet. It twitches in his small hand. The bird is small but so is Malcolm. But Malcolm is small in a different way. It twitches again but Malcolm continues to stay still, The bird dies painfully in his hands when Malcolm moves again.

His mother understandably freaks out about it. She yelled at him but stopped when Malcolm didn’t react to it with anything but a frown. She sighs and dials Malcolm’s therapist.

Ainsley never finds out about the incident. She is told it flew away through a window and disappeared. When she cries about the loss of the bird, their mother smiles and buys another one. The cage can’t just go to waste, and birds were cheap for a woman like their mother. So a new bird takes residence in the cage.

Malcolm doesn't react too well with the news that they were just going to get another one. He yells at his mom and tries explaining to her that they were the ones killing the birds, not him. That he needed to fix their mistakes and that he did fix them. Malcolm was being good. This was being good!

He tells this to his dad during his next visit. And his dad agrees with Malcolm. He says that Malcolm is doing the right thing and that Malcolm's actions were understandable. He says this all to Malcolm while wearing a gleeful smile. He says that it's only natural for Malcolm to want to help the birds. He says that he understands deeply, that that was why he became a doctor in the first place. It was why he became a surgeon. The word reminds Malcolm that Martin is _the_ Surgeon.

Malcolm cries because he doesn't want his father's approval and he cries because the understanding made him feel better if only for a little while.

Ainsley doesn't hear the argument Malcolm has with their mom, and she doesn't hear Malcolm whispering explanations in the living room, but she still suspiciously glances at Malcolm when he calmly refills the new bird's water feeder.

Deciding to go along with a sky theme, the bird was named Sunset. Sunset because of its yellow feathers.

After a few weeks, Malcolm feeds its dead body to a snake in their backyard and his mom silently replaces it with a nearly identical one for Ainsley.

This goes on for the next three parakeets. Malcolm and Ainsley’s mother buys a poor little bird and Malcolm ends up intentionally killing it in one form or another. They die quickly and painlessly every time. Malcolm’s therapist tries to get him to explain why they keep dying and he doesn’t explain. Their mother tries her best to find birds that look the same. By the fourth bird, Ainsley carefully asks where the last one went during a quiet breakfast.

The fifth bird lasted an entire year, but Malcolm ends up spraying its food with rat poison and it dies. However, the poison takes two days and a half to really kill the bird. Malcolm feels some sort of guilt over it and decides he wouldn’t ever use rat poison ever again.

The sixth bird doesn’t make it home. In the car ride with the freshly purchased bird, Malcolm stares widely at it. Nine minutes away from their home, Malcolm’s tremor quickly worsens and his heart speeds up.

In some sort of panic, Malcolm grabs the cage and unlocks its door. His hand holds the unlocked door shut as he rolls down the closest window. His caretaker is screaming his name as Malcolm shakes the cage ut the window. The bird flutters away but Malcolm doesn't see where it goes. His caretaker breathes heavily and grabs his shoulders in worry. The caretaker pets his hair and Malcolm forces himself to relax. They decide that maybe pets were a bad idea.

Malcolm likes to think the parakeet survives but he knows that parakeets wouldn’t be able to survive the cold and bustle of New York. He knows it's likely that another car rammed into its fragile form.

Malcolm buys the seventh parakeet during his last year of high school. He buys it with his own money and he buys it a cage that Malcolm deems perfect. His mother gives a nervous smile as he shows her. Ainsley studies the bird with confusion before shrugging and going back to her room. Malcolm’s new parakeet is named Dusk and it lives for five years. He takes good care of Dusk and even keeps Dusk during college. He upgrades its cage when he can and it never gets injured. Malcolm buys the bird special food and ornaments for the enclosure. Malcolm takes real good care of it.

It dies because no one comes to feed it during the two weeks Malcolm is hospitalized after a delusional psychotic break he has because of an argument with his dad during visiting hours.

All of this is why Malcolm Bright has a panic attack when his mother gifts him a new parakeet, named Sunshine, as a welcome home gift. Sunshine is in a little round cage and Sunshine is the nickname that his mother had for himself. He hasn’t had an actual pet in over ten years and when he returns to New York after being fired, he doesn’t think he’s qualified at all for this new bird.


End file.
